A Dogwood Memory

FEATURED AUTHOR—MEMOIR A Dogwood Memory Earl Hamner In the beginning, Schuyler, Virginia, was a company town, the home of The Alberene Stone Corporation, which quarried and milled soapstone. Our town was located in that part of the Blue Ridge known as The Ragged Mountains. We were six miles from Route 29, the main artery connecting the great cities of the north to the south. We reached 29 along a country road, the most beautiful stretch of rural road known to man, the Rockfish River Road. We lived in company-built houses and bought our goods from the company store. Schuyler had been a prosperous little village, but, when the Great Depression came, the mill closed. My father found work in Waynesboro and could only be home with his family on holidays and weekends. We missed him, and, on Fridays, even before the sun went down, my mother could be seen at the window looking down the road. The first whisper of spring came with the budding of the crocuses that shoved their purple, blue and yellow faces up through the last of the snow along the walk down to the front gate. Soon the redbud and dogwood blossomed bringing light into the pine forests. Snow melted along the northern corners of the yard, and a stiff wind took our homemade kites to breathless heights. I remember a typical weekend from those years. Mornings were strangely quiet because the whistle calling the workers to the mill no longer sounded. On this morning the sound that woke us was that of my father, home for the weekend, building a fire in the wood-burning cook stove. He drenched the wood with kerosene, and, when he lit it with a match, the flames made a whooshing sound as they roared up the chimney. Shortly, he called down the hall to my mother, "Sweetheart," which was his name for her till his dying day. My mother answered, "I'm on my way," and joined him in the kitchen. They spoke quietly to each other, sharing private moments in their brief time alone. Soon the sound of coffee percolating and the aroma of sizzling bacon would drift up to our rooms. We descended upon them, eight red headed brothers and sisters, crowding around the stove to chase away the early morning chill. 22 Breakfast was served at a long wooden trestle table my father had built, and, while we ate, he would admire his brood and call us his "thoroughbreds." We were smallboned, lean children. Each of us had a different shade of red hair. Everybody had a chore. The girls helped our mother wash and dry the dishes, make the beds, wash and iron the clothes. The boys tended to outside chores. There was the cow to be milked. She was a brown and white Guernsey. My father had bought her from Miss Dolly Hall for forty dollars. Miss Dolly had named her Chance because she gave a "good "chanct" of butter. Miss Dolly had never heard of a writer named Chaucer and would have been surprised to learn that the two of them used the same word to describe "a good quantity." The chickens had been up before us and were waiting for the grain we tossed to them on the frosty ground. Feeding the pigs was a melancholy chore. They had intelligent eyes and looked up trustingly as we poured slop into their trough. I knew, and it pained me, but they were unaware that they would only live till the first frost of the next winter. They seemed to know when they caught sight of the knife that the hand that had poured their slop had betrayed them. I can still hear their death cries to this day. We were part of two great clans. In addition to my mother's family, most of whom lived close by, on almost every weekend my father's people, aunts and uncles and cousins would arrive from Richmond and Petersburg. We were in awe of the city cousins. They used slang words that were new to us such as "guy," "jerk," or "kiddo," which made us feel naïve and countrified. We children...